Cloaked in Darkness
by Mercury's Winter
Summary: With Trance's knowledge of the future, the crew has defeated the tunnel aliens but did she make the future better by trading places with her younger self...or worse? *Chapter 3 up*
1. Chapter 1

TITLE: Cloaked in Darkness  
  
AUTHOR: Mercury's Winter mercurys_winter@yahoo.com  
  
RATING: PG-13 for owies and a couple of minor swears  
  
ARCHIVE: Yes, ask first please.   
  
SPOILERS: Ourboros, Tunnel, and Wheel for now I'll update if there are any more spoilers.  
  
DISCLAIMER: This is all in fun, no money is coming my way, Andromeda and its characters belong to Tribune Entertainment.  
  
COMMENTS/FEEDBACK: Yes PLEASE! It's the only reason I write! Love it? Hate it? Let me hear about it!   
  
SETTING/SEASON: Season 3 Takes place after "If the Wheel is Fixed"   
  
SUMMARY: With Trance's knowledge of the future, the crew has defeated the tunnel aliens but did she make the future better by trading places with her younger self...or worse?   
  
A/N: This fic (the first two chapters anyway) were originally posted exclusively at Gordon AI's Andromeda site: http://www.angelfire.com/scifi2/gordon_ai about the time SlipStream went down. Despite our agreement of exclusivity, he has graciously agreed to let me post it here. THANKS GORDON! :D (Maybe he thinks if you all bug me enough for more, I'll actually finish the darn thing ;-))   
  
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Darkness. Trance's world had been reduced to an all-encompassing darkness punctuated by dark swirling clouds of green and purple. Floating in the dreamy silence she tried to focus on the gauzy forms but as soon as her wandering gaze located one it would flit away only to reappear instantly in another location. By varying degrees consciousness began to reassert itself on her inert form and she realized with self-depreciating mirth that it was dark because her eyes were closed. With great effort she cracked her left eye open and was confused when the darkness did not recede. She felt the first inklings of panic flutter through the pit of her stomach. Her right eye wouldn't obey her command to open so she reached a shaky hand up to her head to find out why. Her fingers met a wet, sticky substance that could only have been her own blood. She groaned as awareness seeped into her followed quickly by an all-consuming agony. She clenched her jaw against the swelling tide and waited. Slowly the pain began to recede but not before leaving her breathless from it's power.   
  
She became aware that she was lying on a hard surface but couldn't recall where she had been before...before what? Her mind was covered in a fine layer of fog; she kept a tight lid on her panic, confident that everything would become clear if she just gave it a little time. Trance struggled to a sitting position as her healing powers began to work their magic. In the total darkness, she found herself wondering if she had 'died'. The thought brought a rueful smile to her lips; Harper would have been scared senseless if he had come across her lying dead on the floor...again. Something nagged at the back of her mind but when she tried to concentrate blinding pain stabbed through her head. Frustrated, her ragged breath coming in small gasps, she turned her attention outside and began the task of examining her body to determine the extent of her injuries.   
  
Her hair had come unclipped and lay about her face and shoulders in a fiery cloud. Her right eye was indeed swollen shut and caked with blood from a large gash on her forehead. Smaller cuts and scrapes peppered her cheeks but were of little consequence, her body's accelerated healing would have no problem with such minor injuries. Traveling down her body, she found her clothes ripped and torn and although she her muscles and joints ached as if she had been dragged through the slipstream drive of a freighter, she could find no more damage until she came to her right thigh. In the darkness, her fingers grazed a piece of metal imbedded in her leg. She gasped as a hot sliver of pain instantly traveled through her tortured nerves. When the pain had ebbed to a dull throb, she hesitantly probed the wound. Her fingers curled around warped steel, she unconsciously closed her eyes, trying to see with her mind's eye what her hands were feeling. The metal protruded from her leg approximately six inches how much lay buried within her she could only guess. The wound at its base was clean, void of jagged edges or a lateral tear. Trance squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth as she prepared to do the only thing she could, remove the splinter herself. Gathering her courage, she mentally counted to three and yanked the metal out of her leg. With an unimaginable force of will she bit back a scream of pain as she felt cold steel graze against bone.   
  
Immediately she tore a scrap of leather from her outfit and used another to secure it over the site. She was lucky, the invading metal did not puncture the artery in her leg. She let out a shaky sigh and leaned her head back against the smooth, cool wall. It was so comfortable the way the wall curved slightly, almost perfectly conforming to her position, propped up as she was. The nagging sensation returned, this time it was more of a persistent tugging. Something was pulling at her, urging her to get up and...and what? She banged her head against the smooth wall in frustration trying to knock the fuzz out of her brain. She stopped when she began to see points of light dancing in her vision, she didn't think being unconscious again would be a good thing.   
  
With a grunt of determination she struggled weakly to her feet, almost not making it as her injured leg buckled and refused to obey her body's demands on it. Leaning heavily on the wall, her head spinning from the blow she had received, Trance fumbled in the dark for a tiny flashlight she kept in a pocket near her katanna blades. After what seemed like an eternity, she grasped the fragile instrument in fingers that felt strangely numb. "Come on, don't be broke, don't be broke." She whispered. She held her breath and flicked the switch. A pale, sickly yellow light burst forth. It was terribly weak but Trance still had to squint her eyes against the sudden illumination. She realized that she was staring directly at the light surprised that it actually worked. Turning her head slightly she got her first look at her surroundings. Curved walls, grating on the floor, blank computer station, "Andromeda." Trance sighed with relief. She wasn't on some strange alien planet, she was home, on the Andromeda. She had to stifle a hysteric giggle of relief. The light began to wan as she let her eyes roam the corridor. To her right was nothing but black corridor for as far as the meager light could reach see. She turned to her left and nearly dropped the flashlight, the hallway was completely blocked by rubble.   
  
The torch began to flicker as she stared at the mountain of ruin in the middle of Andromeda's normally spotless corridor. Memories strobed through her mind in time with the blinking of the flashlight. Dark, engineering. Light, explosions. Dark, enemy. Light, running. Dark and more dark. The flashlight winked out permenantly and the inky blackness settled in her heart like a lead weight.   
  
Gulping air faster than she needed it, Trance began to hyperventilate. She felt slim tendrils of panic worm their way through her insides. "Andromeda?" She called. Nothing. "Rommie? Anybody?" Trance stood there in the dark trembling, waiting for an answer. None came. She knew she was letting panic win as her mind raced to make sense of the images she had seen. Not knowing where she was going, she turned to the right and began to hobble down the corridor as fast as her injured leg would allow. Still surrounded by the fathomless dark and filled with a dreadful, panicked urgency she made her way until her foot caught a large piece of rubble and she was sent sprawling to the floor. Tears of pain and frustration welled in her dark eyes as she pounded her fist on the deck. She lay there, her body wracked with silent sobs.   
  
Softly she felt the now familiar mental tugging. "Go away." She whispered. The tugging became a pulling, filled with an ominous force. It was obvious her own mind wouldn't let her just lie there and wallow in self-pity. Trance groaned and rolled onto her back swiping angrily at her tear-filled eyes, embarrassed at her weakness even though there was no one to see it. The pulling in her mind became more frantic and for the first time since she woke up she felt the cobwebs begin to blow away and allow her to think clearly. She closed her eyes, took a deep, ragged breath, and concentrated. Reality wavered and soon she was inside her memories, watching them play out before her as if on a holo-disc.  
  
*************  
  
TBC 


	2. Chapter 2

Thanks for the reviews! :D I'm glad you are liking it so far, here's the next part!  
  
Chapter 2 (Trance's memories)  
  
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"Harper! Harper, are you in here?" Trance watched herself enter main engineering and call for Harper.   
  
"What's up?" Came the muffled response. Trance squinted into the gloom. Andromeda was running a self-diagnostic and had all routines at half power, this included lights. She could just barely make out the top of Harper's spikey blonde head as it traveled back and forth behind a stack of crates.   
  
"Dylan wants to know how much more time you need to finish the upgrades." Trance approached the crates. She cocked her head as she curiously searched for a way into the maze of boxes that were stacked as tall as she was. She spoke to where she thought Harper was, "Rommie's almost finished with her diagnostic and Dylan said he'd like to have the external sensors up as soon as she's finished."  
  
Harper jumped up to see over the crates, his blue eyes catching sight of Trance, he quickly said, and "I'll be done soon." before landing nimbly back where he started. Startled, Trance narrowed her eyes at the crate behind which the engineer had disappeared. A mischievous glint sparkled in her eyes she crept up to the crate and tensed her legs. She was just about to pounce and scare the pants off her best friend when his head popped up three crates down, she had just enough time to register the cocky grin on his face before he disappeared again.  
  
"Hey Trance," Harper giggled, two crates on her right this time, "ever play wack-a-mole?"   
  
Trance laughed at the obscure reference but she got the idea. She may be a golden warrior now but she still loved playing Harper's games. Especially this one because she knew she could win. She lowered her gaze and followed the strings of possibility. He mind lead her to the left four crates. Certain that Harper would appear there next she quietly lay in wait, ready to grab him and wack his mole, whatever that was.   
  
She thought she heard Harper coming her way and tensed, ready to attack when suddenly a terrifying feeling came over her. She shuddered as her blood ran cold with fear. Harper's game forgotten, she concentrated on the source of the irrational fear. The feeling was a slippery, evil intruder into her thoughts. She mentally latched on to the invader and struggled to bring it into the light so she could examine it. As quickly as it had come, it slipped through the fingers of her mind and was gone.   
  
"Boo!" Harper exclaimed as his head poked up from the crate in front of her. In the split second he saw her, he knew something was wrong. He sprung back up immediately, "Trance, what is it?" He landed back behind the crate and started to make his way out of the maze to be near his friend.  
  
"Harper, finish the sensors and have Rommie abandon her diagnostic." Trance panted, "I have to get to command."   
  
Harper bounced back up in time to see her disappear out the door to engineering.  
  
******************  
  
Trance flew through the corridors, calling for Andromeda. "Trance, what's wrong?" The ship's hologram appeared immediately and floated alongside Trance as she ran.  
  
"We're under attack. Stop your diagnostic and tell Dylan I'm on my way."   
  
The hologram frowned, "I detected nothing threatening in this sector. Even with my external sensors down, I think I would know if we were under attack."  
  
Trance stopped and gaped at the hologram. "I...I just know something is about to happen. We're all in very real danger." As if to emphasize her point, the ship rocked as explosions ripped along its side.  
  
It was the hologram's turn to gape she flickered and winked out. Trance resumed her trek to command and soon heard Andromeda's melodic voice echoing throughout the entire ship. "Code red, all hands battle stations. Captain to the bridge."   
  
Seconds later Trance recognized Dylan's frantic voice as he called to his engineer over the com, "Harper-we need external sensors--NOW!"  
  
"You got it boss. External sensors online, let's get the son's of...whoever they are!" Came Harper's tinny reply.  
  
The lights in the corridor flickered as the ship was hit again. Tyr's voice thundered over the com, practically vibrating the very walls of the ship. "The ship's weapons are not responding."   
  
Harper, out of breath and more than a little panicked replied almost immediately, "It's the diagnostic, it takes a while to restore all files when a halt has been ordered. I'll get into the matrix and try and speed things up."  
  
"Hurry Harper, I can't out run them forever." Beka said.   
  
Trance increased her speed, her lungs burning for oxygen as she silently cursed the fact that it was so far between engineering and the command deck. A premonition briefly stabbed at her mind. She skidded to as stop, desperately trying to make sense of the warning when her world exploded. The corridor in front of her blew apart, shrapnel and fire surrounded her. She felt herself picked up by the force of the blast and flung like a rag doll to the floor.   
  
***************  
  
TBC 


	3. Chapter 3

See Chapter 1 for Disclaimer  
  
A/N: Here is chapter 3 (finally) :D Thanks for all the wonderful reviews! You guys are the best!   
  
A/N2: Gordon, I split Chapter 2 so this chapter isn't anything new yet :D Chapter 4 coming soon!  
  
(Present)  
  
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Trance gasped and opened her eyes as her last memory came to a dark halt. She struggled to slow her ragged breath as the impact of what had transpired threatened to send her over the edge of panic's fragile precipice. She felt stinging tears spring to her eyes and stubbornly forbade them to fall. The time for being weak was past, she needed to gather her strength if she was going to be any good to anyone.   
  
Relaxing as much as possible, she closed her eyes once again and reached out with her feelings for her shipmates. Much of her body's energy was being expended on the healing process; she attempted to shunt some of that energy to her senses, stretching herself to the breaking point. Nothing. She couldn't feel any of them. She told herself it was because she was weaker than she thought, not because they were dead. She made that her litany as she rolled onto her side and brought her shaky legs underneath her. Rising slowly, most of her body's reserves drained, she tried to think of what to do next.  
  
Trance mentally took stock of her surroundings. She had been heading to the bridge but that way was blocked. The only route open to her took her away from the command deck. She bit her lip anxiously. She knew she had to get to Dylan, she had to tell him what she thought was happening. Unfortunately she was not as intimately familiar with the ship as Harper and knew she would get hopelessly lost trying to take an alternate route in the pitch dark. Harper--if she followed this corridor, she would get to engineering and Harper, surely he would be able to lead her to the bridge.   
  
Trance felt her spirits lift at the thought of her friend. Of course Harper would be able to get Andromeda up and running again, he was after all, a super genius. Trance smiled slightly and started walking toward engineering, her feet a little more sure but also more cautious.   
  
Her smile faltered as she came across more rubble in her path. She wound her way slowly through the jagged pieces of metal. There was much more damage than she had anticipated. She noticed with mounting anxiety that the air had begun to smell faintly stale. Trance was certain that had there been light she would have been able to see her breath. Shaking off her concerns as easily as she shook off the cold, she continued on.   
  
After what seemed like an eternity of crawling blindly over and around various obstacles she arrived at her destination. The corridor ended in a "T" junction, the door to engineering lay directly in front of her. She took a deep breath and crossed the corridor, here arms outstretched in anticipation of encountering closed doors.   
  
To her surprise the doors were open. Trance stopped, she held her breath and listened for any sign that there was another living creature in the room. No sound greeted her ears but the insistant beat of her own heart as it commanded she give it some oxygen. "Harper?" She whispered. The sound barely registered in the deafening silence. She cleared her throat and tried again. "Harper where are you?" The only reply was her own voice echoing back to her, hauntingly transformed as it bounced off the metal walls of main engineering.   
  
Her hopes rapidly falling Trance remained still. She felt her strength returning and thought that she might finally have enough energy to summon her own illumination. Closing her eyes she concentrated and soon a small spark of golden light glowed weakly from the tips of the fingers on her left hand.   
  
Out of the gloom rose piles of twisted metal, monstrously transformed into hulking heaps of ruin. Wires that should have been sparking and full of life hung limp from the ceiling like slumbering serpents. Trance's face reflected her inner turmoil as she gazed at the room in shock. She took a couple of tentative steps, searching for something familiar, something that would tell her that she hadn't stepped through the doors into another dimension, that this was indeed the engineering portion of Andromeda. Broken parts, melted steel, a table snapped in two all seemed alien to her, out of place in such a fierce landscape. She knelt as one object in particular gleamed in the soft light of her power. Trance swallowed hard as she touched the crushed can of Sparky cola. Tears glistened in her eyes at the thought of her friend and she blinked several times to clear her vision.   
  
Refusing to accept what was becoming painfully obvious, Trance stood and continued her search. Cautiously working her way deeper into the room her light revealed a mountain. She narrowed her eyes, trying to penetrate the gloom. As she drew nearer she realized that it was not a mountain but stacks and stacks of crates forming a shape that was vaguely that of a pyramid. Gasping, her light momentarly dimming, Trance remembered that within the maze of crates was where she had last seen Harper. Now those boxes were piled 15 feet high, their contents splilling down the from the peak in an avalanche of spare parts and packing material.   
  
The remaining crates formed foothills around the towering monolith. With her heart in her throat, Trance approached the giant stack. Moving her glowing hand over the structure, she searched for any sign that Harper had escaped. She was so intent on her search that she almost missed a two foot gap at the very base of the pyramid. Taking a deep breath, Trance moved her light to the space and peered inside. Her ragged breath sent plumes of dust into the stale air, temporarily blocking her view. She held her breath and waited for the dust to settle. That was when she saw it, a hand, a human hand lying between the crates. It was covered in blood. In her panic, Trance's light went out.  
  
**************  
  
TBC 


	4. Chapter 4

Thanks so much for all the wonderful reviews :D I know it's been a really long time since I updated this story. Sorry 'bout that, hope this makes up for it :D  
  
Chapter 4  
  
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To a normal human, Trance's ragged breathing would have been the only sound in the now dark machine shop. Trance, however, was no human and slowly her remaining senses took up the slack for her lack of sight. She could feel the enormity of the crates piled before her, mocking her with their massive immobility. Pitched far below her racing heart and rasping breath, she could hear the muffled creaking of twisted metal deep in the bowels of the ship. She could feel subtle vibrations of that metal as it buckled futher. Her heartbeat doubled as she was just able to make out the coppery smell of blood wafting through the swirling dust and ditrius. She was concentrating so hard on picking up the smallest sensations around her, she nearly missed the barely audible groan that issued from the stack of debris. She froze, wondering if it was her imagination or merely wishful thinking. Then, from the same location she heard a brief rustling followed by another moan, followed by an unmistakeble voice muttering "Ow, oh, man...OW!"  
  
"Harper! Are you all right?" Trance called out, her voice echoing eerily back to her through the unfathomable dark.   
  
Seconds ticked by with no response, then a whispered, "Trance?" sent the golden woman's heart soaring.  
  
"Yes, Haper, it's me. Don't move, I'll get you out of there as soon as I can." Trance blindly searched the area around her for anything she could use as a source of illumination. Her worry for her ship mate prevented her from concentrating enough to make her own light.  
  
Harper coughed thickly, "What happened?"  
  
"We were attacked. But everything's going to be ok, we're ok." Trance said, needing to convince herself of that fact. She resumed her search for material to make a torch.   
  
"Trance?" The weak voice muffled by tons of debris was barely audible. "It hurts."  
  
With those two words Trance's heart decided her chest was no longer a nice neighborhood and relocated to her stomach. On only one occasion could she remember Harper admitting he was in pain. Sure, he whined and put up a fuss when he burned a finger or stubbed a toe, but that was just Harper clamoring for attention, mostly *her* attention. However, Trance had noticed over the years, the worse the pain, physical or emotional, the more the young man insisted he was "good". Trance chalked this quirk in the engineer's make-up to his early years on Earth. Obviously weakness of any kind would have been lethal under such conditions as Harper was raised.   
  
Her mind drifted back to the alternate time-line from which she came. In her past, the tesseract machine was destroyed and the Magog larvae in Harper's stomach continued to hatch. Before Trance was forced to mercifully take his life, Harper said those same two words...   
  
"T-Trance? You still there?"  
  
Harper's panic-laced words broke through Trance's thoughts. "Yes, I'm here, I'm going to help you, just stay calm." She tried to sound reassuring and in control but was sure that even through a meter of metal and plastic, Harper could hear the tremor in her voice.  
  
She had come across a couple of items that looked promising, a length of pipe and a pail of thick grease that promised to burn for a long time. 'Ok,' Trance though, 'now all I need is a spark' She closed her eyes and calmed her thoughts. She concentrated all the power of her being. Soon the end of her finger once again began to glow, not gold but fire red. "Trance?"   
  
The spark sputtered and died as her concentration was broken. "What?" Trance snapped, more harshly than she intended. She immediately felt terrible when the only sound from the pile was Harper's wheezing breaths.   
  
"A-are you ok?" Harper whispered.  
  
A sob nearly escaped her throat. She struggeld with a sudden sense of hopelessness. The weight of the situation pressed down on her like invisible hands. How could she have let this happen? Were the others still alive? How would she find them? How would she get Harper out from under a ton of mangled machine parts? 'One step at a time' she thought to herself. Galliantly she pushed the sob down past the 'for rent' sign in her chest, down to become roommates with her heart in the pit of her stomach. "I'm ok Harper, just tired."   
  
"You should rest." Harper suggested, sounding as if it were the most logical thing in the world. For all she knew it was, after all, wasn't that what she always told him when he was sick or hurt or frustrated or angry?  
  
"Not until I have you out of there." She said to disembodied voice of her friend.  
  
"Uh, Trance?"   
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Out of where?"  
  
Trance blinked as the realization hit her, due to the complete lack of light, Harper didn't know he was burried under a mountain of twisted metal. 'Keep him calm' Trance thought frantically. "Harper, there's no need to panic..."  
  
"Trance, whenever someone says that to me, it's always followed by a perfect reason TO panic!" Harper's breathing became even more labored, gurgling as if he was trying to breathe underwater through a leaky straw.   
  
"Harper." Trance barked, this time her voice harsh on purpose. "Everything will be ok but you need to stay calm. When we were attacked, this part of the ship was hit hard. Do you remember all the crates that were piled up in here?"  
  
"Y-yes."   
  
"Well, the crates got knocked around a lot and piled up everywhere..." Trance trailed off, as she tried to find the most delicate way to break the situation to him.   
  
The engineer, genius that he was, figured it out for himself. "I'm trapped?" Harper's words were laced with fear. "I'm b-burried alive?" Trance heard muffled scraping sounds as Harper tried to free himself. "Oh god, Trance, I gotta get outa here!"  
  
"Harper don't move!" Trance yelled, "The crates are very unstable, you could cause them to..." With a creak and a groan the pile shifted. An avalanche of insulation, machine parts and their containers raced toward the gold woman. Her screams mingled with Harper's, echoing around the machine shop long after the two beings were silenced.   
  
****  
  
tbc 


End file.
